Lemmy

Adding a Federated tab on the front page, so it's Subscribed/Local/Federated/All, would help.

Allowing sorting communities on the communities page by subscribers/category/userspermonth/etc by clicking on the relevant column name and having one of the columns be "instance", would help. Sort the instances automatically alphabetically or by total userspermonth or posts of all of its communities combined or whatever in the background.

Adding the [email protected] and instance.tld/c/community search syntax.

Adding a small "What is Lemmy and how does it work" tutorial link under the signup/login button. Could be just a "Help?" button. Leads to a simple page that explains the federation concept in layman terms. I prefer the simple "public email" comparison, most people seem to get that quickly.

Maybe federated communities shouldn't be shown the same way. Maybe they could have a small "federated" tag next to the name that stands out, in the default theme color scheme css this could be a green background on the "federated" text of the tag. It's important users notice at a glance they can access federated communities from here on lemmy.ml (or whatever instance they're on).